Mixed Heritage | Mixed Culture | Mixed Identity | Mixed Parenting

Television

Frances Cress Welsing was an American Afrocentrist psychiatrist. Her 1970 essay, The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism, offered her interpretation on the origins of what she described as white supremacy culture. -Wikipedia

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“Fresh Off the Boat” (2015– ) is a US television sitcom that features an Asian American main cast, the first since “All American Girl” (1994) starring Margaret Cho. It is pretty much “The Wonder Years” with Asian faces. Critics have largely praised the show.

It is inspired by a book, “Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir” (2013) by Eddie Huang, a Taiwanese American lawyer and restauranteur.

Premise: Eddie Huang’s family moves from Washington, DC’s Chinatown to suburban Orlando, Florida in the mid 1990s to run a steakhouse. The family struggles with assimilation in their new environment while Eddie finds solace in hip hop.

“I’m happy to share that I was a part of an egg freezing discussion with Egg Banxx and Fox11 this week. Notice the title under my name this time. My eggs aren’t just frozen, they’re banked. Click here to watch the clip. ”

Ice, water, and steam are all forms of water. Race also needs to be understood in different ways and through different lenses.

The lens of society

Society racializes us. A race label is applied to us regardless of our true ethnic heritage.

The lens of sociology

Race is the label that the census and school applications require of us to self identify in order to track discrimination, a requirement since the 1964 civil rights. Race (phenotype) is based on our outward appearance, whereas race (haplotype) takes into account our whole physical identity – inside and out.

The lens of medical science

Most anthropologists describe race (phenotype) as a social construct, often used to discriminate and segregate. Whereas most medical scientists, who are curing diseases, will describe race (haplotype) as real. Medical institutions collect data on self identified race (phenotype). As dangerous as the slippery slope of race-base medicine is, there has been success in finding bone marrow donors through race based donation drives for groups who find it challenging to find a bone marrow match for example.

The lens of hate

Humans are tribal by nature. Wired into us is a fear of the new that we do not understand and therefor a fear of the other. The word for this is xenophobia. Having unchecked fear and living in a society that normalizes the doctrine of white supremacy leads to the normalization of racism.

On Ferguson and the killing of people of color by white police officers:

I am surprised, with all that’s been talked about with this issue for decades, at the language we use to discuss this. I would offer one simple adjustment to our thinking, which would potentially get us to finally address the issue at its source. We have a way of talking about this as in the passive tense rather than the active tense. I heard students at one of my recent visits to a college talk about how “I am in danger because of the color of my skin.” This is not true, you are in danger because of the mindset of the culture and mentality and actions of other people. The burden is not on you. It is on them. You are not being killed (passive tense), people are killing you (active tense). You can’t stop the passive tense, you can only stop the active tense. Stop the killing—then people will stop being killed.

I had reservations about this show and I was not overly impressed with the first episode. The writers did an okay job, good enough to give them more air time though. I didn’t feel the problem was a twisting of identities. The show is about mixed identity and that’s what makes it interesting.

On movies about painful parts of Back History:

I totally feel Ayo on her point here. I can relate because I can’t stand watching videos of people getting hurt, whereas many seem to love watching those videos. I also don’t like horror movies. And because I’m aware of people’s sensitive feelings and that painful news can trigger remembering other painful events, I try to limit painful news and painful history on my personal Facebook page. However, because it’s important to know the truth of current events and history I do post about painful news and history on some of my social media. I segment what I post. I put oppressive stuff on my Oppression Monitor social sites and more positive or neutral posts on my Community Village social sites.

On “Dear White People” and Movies like it:

I thought I was not going to love this movie based on some of the previews I saw. However, the acting, directing, cinematography, lighting, hair, wardrobe and story as a whole were all excellent! And it’s a good movie to open discussions on fraternity segregation compared to housing segregation. Fraternities like to be grouped by common interests, whereas segregated housing off campus is highly problematic. This movie could also prompt great blog posts about interracial dating, interracial marriage, identity framing, society response to interracial dating / marriage and family response to interracial dating / marriage.